Monday, April 09, 2007

Not because of my somewhat astonishingly escalating age, of course... After all, that ain't nothin' but a number. The true indicator of my burgeoning maturity is my successful, repeated resistance of the urge to pummel people to a pulp when they say that Planet Terror is a better movie than Death Proof.

Seriously, though... What's up with that? Rodriguez's movie was like a way overlong and definitely less funny "Mad TV" sketch. I'm not saying that QT's offering ranks among his best work by any means - for one thing, it was a bit too talky even by his standards - but at least he seemed exhibit some understanding and empathy for the concept that he was working with rather than falling back on the adolescent impulse to make fun of bad movies by making a bad movie.

But hey, rather than me adding my feeble voice to the fiery debates that are certainly raging across the blogosphere at this moment, I'd rather just defer to much more articulate commentators than myself like Walter Chaw and Ryland Walker Knight, who both pretty much sum up the way I feel about the movie(s) in question. (Uh... That would be Grindhouse, just in case you were wondering.)

Something in particular that Knight says that struck a chord with me:

"For all his fanboy inanity and no matter his actual intentions, Tarantino, unlike his buddy Rodriguez, makes smart films that are fully aware of the film medium — and how it works onscreen, and on an audience. His films demonstrate his realization that film is not necessarily or primarily a narrative vehicle." (emphasis mine)

That particular line crystallized for me certain vaguely-formed thoughts and impulses I have about cinematic storytelling, the almost inherent aesthetic failure of Nollywood and how we kinda fell prey to those weaknesses in the making of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.

I think I'll blog about that later.

And man oh man... If i make any resolution on my birthday, I've got to stop saying "I'll blog about it later" and then not blog about it later. Not only do I have a whole backlog of "Making of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN" entries from last summer that I haven't put up, but then there's a bunch of more recent stuff that I haven't even gotten around to.

(Of course, I don't expect anybody other than myself to care too much about this, but I really did want to get more consistent with this blogging shit.)

Okay... So it's a promise (to myself). More regular blog entries. Just because.